Faith to Walk on Water

“And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? “

(Matthew 14:28-31)

A quest to know Jesus more. A step of faith. A tempest of doubt. A saving hand. A question of faith. This is more than just Peter walking on water.

It’s everyday life.

It’s all of us, in our daily decisions, in our hopes and dreams and losses and failures.

We want to know Jesus better, to follow Him, to see the reality of Heaven in the ordinary everyday–Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee. We want to know if it’s truly Him. We want to see Him, experience Him, know that He is working in our lives.

He answers, Come.

He offers freely, unconditionally. He is willing to reveal to us the mystery of the Father through Himself. He is willing to show us a glimpse of His Kingdom. He only asks that we step out and follow Him.

The decision cannot be made lightly, but we take the risk. We step out in faith—out of our security, out of our comfort. We forsake everything that we think we need, and abandon everything that we are.

The price for following Jesus is that we give up all but Him.

We have to be willing to surrender everything.

The doubt. The natural human tendency to second-guess, to distrust, gets the better of us. We forget, we lose sight of the fact that God directs everything. Our doubt blinds us to the hand that holds the world.

The circumstances of life whirl us and make us lose focus on the Being in front of us. When he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid. He was afraid, when Jesus was right there, because he started focusing on his problems instead of his solution.

He cried out, as we all do in our distress, “Lord, save me.”

We cry out for the miracle that we wanted all along but couldn’t bring ourselves to believe in until we had no other hope.

We’re stuck with no other option, no way of getting ourselves out, and no way of reaching Jesus ourselves. It is when we lose our confidence in ourselves that Jesus is ready to step in.

Immediately, Jesus reached out to him.

He is just waiting. He wants to reach out, reach us, but He waits until we are at the end of ourselves. Then He embraces us and brings the miracle we were waiting for.

It may not be the rescue we want, but it is the rescue we need.

And finally, we realize : how did we even doubt to begin with?

How, with such wonder and miraculous working and a salvation such as we have, did we allow ourselves to doubt His goodness, His provision, His saving?